The Unexpected Dangers of Running a Website, Part 4: I used to collect Muppet
memorabilia that I actually liked. Ah, I remember those days, back when I
actually chose not to purchase an item because it was ugly, badly made or
designed by crazy people. How far away that seems now!

Because, of course, now I have this website to feed, with loyal
readers tugging at my sleeve every five seconds like so many hungry Oliver
Twists. So now finding a copy of Adventures of Big Boy #265, a fast-food
giveaway comic book featuring a badly rendered visit with Jim Henson... well,
it's just like heaven to me.

I found this on Ebay recently, and my eyes just lit up. You should've been
there. I will pay any amount of money for that, I whispered to myself.
Luckily, it was only ten bucks.

So here, loyal readers, is the true story of the day when a fictional
chain-restaurant spokesman traveled to London to interview a real puppeteer,
with a stopover in a fictional New York street to pick up another fictional
character. If that makes sense.

Adventures of Big Boy was a 16-page comic book, printed on cheap-ass
newsprint as a giveaway at Big Boy Restaurants. Big Boy Restaurants, in case you
don't know, is a chain known worldwide (aka the US and Japan) as "The Home
of the Big Boy," a double-decker hamburger. Don't laugh; they've got 455
restaurants, and they could squash you like a bug. Since this is issue #265, I
have to assume that this was a weekly or biweekly deal -- which explains at
least some of the weirdness you're about to see. It was published in May 1979, a
month before The Muppet Movie's release.

The cover lists a price of 25 cents, but right under that it says "FREE to
guests of Kip's Big Boy Family Restaurants." Since the Big Boy restaurants
were the only places you could possibly pick up one of these, I can't imagine
what the "25 cents" is there for. Maybe that's the street value.

Obviously, the fun of all this is for you to find all the assorted weirdness in
this comic yourself, but forgive me for pointing out a couple things. To start
with, the cover depicts Jim Henson sitting on a crate by a dock on the Thames
River, as indicated by the "Thames River" sign wedged under Henson's
foot. That's such a helpful sign; it's a shame it fell into the water like that.
Once it floats away, nobody in London will remember what the river's
called.

So naturally, if you're going to write a three and a half page story about
visiting Jim Henson in London, the first thing you'd want to do is spend the
first page and a half picking up Big Bird on Sesame Street. Right? Or, at least,
some version of Sesame Street drawn without the use of reference material. I can
grudgingly accept the weird colors and the insistence that Big Bird is female.
But what would possess the artist to dress Grover Scissorhands in liederhosen?
Why would it occur to you to do that?

... Although, I have to say, if you're going to do a story about visiting the
Muppet Workshop, you might want to at least get the name of the TV show right.
It's "The Muppet Show," Big Boy, not "The Muppets." Oh,
never mind.

And what do you do with a panel like the bottom one here? I suppose there are
ways to indicate in a cartoon panel that you're seeing a whole bunch of puppets
all at once. This is not one of the acceptable ways. And who left lipstick on
Bunsen's face? What are you implying, Big Boy?